RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

More re­tail stores across the coun­try are clos­ing as the COVID-19 mor­tal­i­ty and in­fec­tion rate con­tin­ues to climb.

In South Trinidad, sev­er­al stores, in­clud­ing Dansteel Lim­it­ed, Ho­sein’s Group of Com­pa­nies and Al­lied Home Cen­tre, an­nounced the clo­sure of their stores un­til May 23.

Man­ag­ing mirec­tor of Al­lied Home Cen­tre Si­mon Alexan­der said all 60 of his work­ers will be paid their full salary dur­ing the clo­sure. Be­fore the lock­down, Alexan­der said some cus­tomers were re­fus­ing to ad­here to COVID-19 pro­to­cols.

“There are peo­ple who give a lot of headaches to wash their hands. Some peo­ple in­sist they do not have to wash their hands be­cause they have hand sani­tis­er in their pock­ets which they have al­ready used. There were some peo­ple we had to turn away,” Alexan­der re­vealed. 

He said clos­ing down his 100,000 square feet store will re­sult in a loss of rev­enue but keep­ing his cus­tomers, work­ers and their fam­i­lies safe was the best op­tion. 

“We are see­ing and hear­ing the high num­bers, which could be equiv­a­lent to one per­son per hour dy­ing. It is a se­ri­ous sit­u­a­tion and to avoid this kind of deaths, we must take it se­ri­ous­ly,” Alexan­der said.

He said sinks, a back­up wa­ter sup­ply, au­to­mat­ic soap dis­pensers and wash sta­tions were set up in the store at the start of the pan­dem­ic.

“We al­so erect­ed signs and plex­i­glass blinds near ser­vice desks, cashiers and the in­dus­tri­al tools cen­tre,” he said.

Mean­while, Bhag­wans­ingh’s and Dansteel Ltd al­so an­nounced the clo­sure of their stores from to­day to May 23, 2021.

“The health and safe­ty of our loy­al cus­tomers and the well­be­ing of our staff re­mains a top pri­or­i­ty for us at Bhag­wans­ingh’s and Dansteel,” com­pa­ny of­fi­cials said in a re­lease, not­ing the com­pa­nies had been close­ly mon­i­tor­ing the in­crease in cas­es across the coun­try.

Al­so closed was the Ho­sein’s Group of Com­pa­nies, which com­pris­es Taz­mool Ho­sein and Sons, Bet­ter Val­ue Lim­it­ed, Ho­sein’s Lights Tiles and Bath, The Spe­cial­ist Hard­ware and Brushrite Plas­tic In­dus­tries Lim­it­ed.

Com­pa­ny spokesper­son Brent Ho­sein said the de­ci­sion to close was based on the spike in in­fec­tions and deaths.

 “We are con­cerned about the deaths. The num­ber is sober­ing and we de­cid­ed to close for the sake of em­ploy­ees and cus­tomers as well as our safe­ty,” Ho­sein said.

He added, “Fi­nances come long af­ter peo­ple’s lives. There are a lot of cas­es re­port­ed in the Princes Town, Gas­par­il­lo and Rio Claro ar­eas where our com­pa­nies are lo­cat­ed. This why we de­cid­ed to close,” he said. 

Ho­sein said about 50 em­ploy­ees would be af­fect­ed.